If not Hamlet without the Prince, this was at least the G20 without Gordon
Brown. David Cameron gave a statement on the G20 summit in Seoul, but found
himself attacked for not being Mr Brown.

Harriet Harman, standing in for Ed Miliband, complained that “Britain needed to send a statesman to that summit, but all we sent was a spectator”. It is just possible that Miss Harman was referring to the weekly magazines, the New Statesman and the Spectator, but it seems more likely that she had Mr Brown and Mr Cameron in mind.

If so, this is one of the most complimentary things she has ever said about Mr Brown. But unfortunately the Member for Kirkcaldy and Cowdenbeath was not in the Chamber to hear it.

Mr Cameron did not seem in the slightest bit put out by Miss Harman’s attack. We suspect he comforted himself with the reflection that some people are glad that he rather than Mr Brown now represents the United Kingdom at these international jamborees.

The Prime Minister began his reply by exclaiming “Oh dear”, in the tone a teacher might use on being presented with an obviously useless bit of homework. Mr Cameron added, with polite condescension, that it was “lovely” to see Miss Harman back, after which he dismissed Labour’s attitude to the Budget deficit as “completely wrong” and said Labour would have been “completely isolated” on this issue at the G20.

Several MPs tried to draw Mr Cameron on the unfolding financial disaster in the Republic of Ireland, but he said he did not want “to make life difficult for the Irish at a time when they are taking difficult decisions”.

Mr Cameron did, however, say the Irish “did follow one key New Labour policy which was to join the Euro”. Some of us could not help thinking how unfair this was to Mr Brown, who had the excellent sense to stymie Tony Blair’s attempts to take us into the Euro.

Chris Williamson (Lab, Derby North) paid tribute to Mr Brown, but for a less convincing reason. Mr Williamson said that “two years ago the then British Prime Minister galvanised world leaders” at the G20 summit.

Mr Cameron replied with a dismissive reference to Mr Brown, “who’s not here today to join in the discussion”, and added that the Coalition Government is having to “deal with the mess” Mr Brown left behind.

This made some of us wonder where Nick Clegg had got to, for the Deputy Prime Minister had an unhappy time last week, when a huge number of students demonstrated against him for breaking his “pledge” to oppose any increase in university fees.

Research by this column has since established that Mr Clegg, who is possibly the first British minister since the days of William of Orange to speak fluent Dutch, was paying his first official visit to the Netherlands.

But Mr Clegg’s leading Liberal Democrat critic, the thin-lipped, hungry-looking Simon Hughes (Bermondsey and Old Southwark), was in the Chamber, where he demanded an end to “excessive bank profits” and “excessive bank bonuses”.

The good news for the Coalition is that Mr Hughes did not demand an end to Mr Clegg. We are delighted to see that this column’s emergency campaign, hastily thrown together in the middle of last week under the title Save Young Nick Clegg, or Sync for short, is already proving its worth.